Apple's forthcoming iPad launch may be delayed a month or limited to the US due to an "unspecified production problem," according to one market analyst.
In a research to note published on Monday, Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek claims to have heard rumblings that a "manufacturing bottleneck" at the iPad's producer will limit …

What's the matter?

Well,

With the size of those screens those kids will have been exposed to a lot of n-Hexane... so they're probably dead.

Apple: Doesn't deliver sufficient units, creating an artificial shortage to boost interest and prices ("ooh, it sold out? It must have been good!" sounds great- "they only had 2 for sale. And those were pre-ordered. Bloody Apple." doesn't.) and kills the kids who build their products.

1,000k?

Thanks Gulfie and AC @ 09:54 GMT

Dipping a toe.

OK, sweepstake time,

I'll have a couple of quid on the 'bottleneck' being Apple crapping themselves about the mediocre welcome the iPad got, but anyone else want to take 'we can't make it work' or 'the screens keep cracking'. Perhaps you might be more interested in 'LiIon battery crotch incinerator' or 'Damnit who designed this piece of crap?'

@AC 10:34

I'll take "Lion crotch incinerator" for 5 bob. Shoved in something so thin, if they cut any corners at all, heat dissipation might get to be an issue. Maybe enough to get the Lion pack going? Who knows!

I would bet...

...on them having finally made the modern equivalent of the Sinclair C5.

I'm sure they'll sell more than Sir Clive ever did, but this is the first Apple consumer device I've had absolutely no interest in owning. Tablet PC's have always been a solution in search of a problem (outside vertical markets ofc) and I don't see that changing with the iPad. Especially as vertical markets normally require extensive customisation, both in hardware and software, and no way will Apple do that.

Not odd...

Yeeehaw Bubba...

I'm a gonna hunt me some fanboi but I gotta read the article to bait ma traps....

We don't think badly of Apple kit, least not any worse than most other kit, what we think badly of is the squeeeeeee sound every time Steve Jobs farts (hey, he's got 40bn stashed, he's gotta have a tight one to have accumulated that much) and, for me at least, it's great fun making fanbois cry.

"Apple kit locks you in"? "Locks you in" to what? If you bought kit that was any good in the first place, you wouldn't need to worry about being "locked in". Every bit of kit I have has "Apple" painted on it because I used to have to use PCs and they are, without exception, shite. From DOS, through 3, XP and Vista, the OS looks like Disney on a bad day and works so counter-intuitively, you'd think it was made for a bet. Perhaps you bought yours for a bet too. Well, you lost!

Because other, smarter folks than you like what Apple does enough to buy some of their stuff - and face it, it looks a lot better than any crap you own - doesn't mean you have to embarrass yourself by exposing your pre-pubescent angst in the pages of El Reg. If you'd gone out and already bought a BMW or a Jag', you wouldn't need to change it to make it go faster, illuminate it with blue lights, water-cooling and feck knows what else you kiddies do to your wretched PCs. Some of us buy the stuff we need to do work, not to sit and play World of Wankcraft until the early hours because the only friends you have are those on line. Been up torrenting all night because you're too mean and dumb to buy stuff legally? You hate copyright and patents? Try making something of your own for once and see how you like it when every turd in the world just nicks it off ya.

I don't own an iPhone, however, and as for the iPad, I can't think of a use for one. But until the thing is in a store near you, stop showing off your ignorance and stupidity and grow up. If it's crap, ok, then point at it and laugh. If it's not, at least have the grace and the smarts enough to say you were wrong about it. Until it arrives on the shelves, shaddup!

erm

Squeeeeeeeeeee

You just don't get it do you?

If you want to use Apple's OS, you are locked in to their hardware unless you want to break a licensing agreement of dubious legality, if you want to buy apps for your iPhone, you are locked in to their store unless you want to jailbreak your phone.

If you disagree with the almighty Jobs and alter your bought and paid for hardware, you run the risk of having said hardware bricked. Imagine if you bought a BMW, fitted a non approved tyre and it refused to start, you'd be a little pissed off wouldn't you?

Running with your BMW analogy, granted most people who buy one don't mod them, most PC owners don't mod their machines, that's because they're fit for purpose out of the box. That's not to say some people don't mod brand new BMWs or PCs, there are very healthy aftermarket modding industries for new German cars and new PCs. Hells, you can even mod your Mac if you like, it's only commodity PC hardware in a shiny box after all.

As for your 'sad geek with no mates' PC owner stereotype, fair enough, there are plenty of those, almost definitely more proportionally than 'more money than sense, bought it because it's pretty, blinkered fanboi' Apple owners but that's because the PC is fairly open and lends itself to being modded and tinkered with, different folks get off on different things, it's called diversity.

My PC works just fine (in fact the only piece of software I use that regularly causes me problems is the polished turd called iTunes but I'm preapred to put up with it because I love my iPod), the only blinkenlights on it are the hard disk indicator and LAN activity lights (power isn't really a blinkenlight because, well, it doesn't blinken) and they are still exactly the same colour as they were at the time of purchase.

The case sits under my desk and doesn't need to be pretty (seriously, how many Mac owners stick their machine under a desk and waste all that expensive design which serves no other purpose than to say 'look at me, I'm stylish'?) it just needs to stop the guts falling apart and serve as a convenient place to rest my feet or non urgent paperwork and, given its dual boot nature, sometimes both.

I don't dislike the idea of patents and copyright where justified, what I do dislike is being exploited by companies that have so much money to spend patenting such blatantly obvious and trivial stuff that they file with no other intent than to stop other people using them. Some patents are nothing more than a hedged bet on a future law suit and software patents are a *massive* fail for so many reasons it's not even funny..

As for copyright, fine, I'm all for people making money off things they've created but how can it be right that I can't format shift? How can it be right that I'm a criminal if I download an MP3 from a torrent site but already own a CD with the same track on it?

As for software, I buy or legally obtain all the stuff I use, hell I even register shareware and send post cards to freeware authors who request them. Funnily enough, I get asked for pirate copies of Mac software as often as I get asked for PC software (refusing both) and oddly enough, there are Bittorrent clients for Mac as well as PC so unless someone is being ironic that would indicate that some Mac owners are partial to a bit of dodgy downloading too!

I will happily admit I love my iPod now that it's not a huge lump to lug about (I bought a 4 or 6GB HDD iPod years ago and absolutely loathed it, I now own a nano G4 and 5 and love them) As for the iPad, if it's a game changing piece of awesomeness I will admit I was wrong, I'm grown up enough to be able to do that. But I really don't think I'm going to have to.

I think our work together is now over, there's nothing more I can do for you if you don't have at least a clue now.

@AC "SQUEEEEEEEEEEE"

But I adore Ms Fotheringham.

Thanks for that, I appreciated it. I was just a little peed off at all the blind anti-Apple crap here. I'm no fan of Jobs but I do appreciate his shiny toys. If I must be absolutely honest, I think the iPad will need a few iterations and/or some pretty earth-shattering apps to make it a genuine winner. Until it can do something really clever, like make me look a little more George Clooney and a little less Bill Gates' dad, I won't be buying one either.